The
march for A Future That Works has come after two years of austerity
cuts, the March for the Alternative in London on March 26 last year,
two co-ordinated one-day strikes by public sector workers in unions
affiliated to the TUC on June 30 and November 30.

As
well as being a reactive protest at austerity, the march proposed an
alternative the establishment of public investment banks to shift the
UK to a low-carbon economy, this would be a just transition which
would create jobs for the unemployed, mitigate against the effects of
climate change, and ensure that the renewable energy generation
gradually replaces high-carbon fossil fuels as the source of power.

Instead
of austerity cuts which fail to reduce either the public debt or
deficit but actually contract the private sector, there could be a
publicly owned and regulated banking system to promote the growth in
economic activity that meets people's needs. Instead of mass
unemployment, there could be jobs for all who are able to work
through public works programmes – the state could act as “employer
of last resort” and bail out the unemployed just as it has bailed
out the banking sector.

The
decision to hold a march and rally in London came before the TUC met
in Brighton and agreed to look at the potential for a day of action
across the whole labour movement. This could would mean workers in
public, private and voluntary sectors, being balloted on whether to
strike in protest at austerity and for a future that works. This
would be a general strike akin to those taken by workers in other
states in which austerity is being imposed – Portugal, Ireland,
Greece, and so on – but unlike the “all out, stay out”
indefinite general strike of 1926. It may be legal under European law
to carry out a co-ordinated day of action by unions across the
economy, though you can be sure the Tories will try to stop it
through the courts if there was a vote for action.

It
feels like we're being pushed backwards by the rising cost of living
– food, fuel, housing, credit, transport – and by the
government's threat to employment protections and other policies, but
we have tools to our advantage. It's cheaper for us to organise and
communicate – we can easily set up online forums which can draw new
people in, build their confidence in their capacity for collective
action.

How
did you experience the march and rally? If you couldn't make it on
the day, what was it like to hear reports of it taking place? If you
were there, what did you think of the mood of people from across the
country – is there a sense of growing confidence or are people just
going through the motions?

A
ROUND OF ANSWERS

Some
time for detailed points people want to make and discussion which
flows from that.

WHAT
IS TO BE DONE?

My
concern is that we consider what “a future that works” actually
means – who would it work for? How would it work? How do we
organise to build this future? How to we communicate amongst
ourselves and the general public?

My
view is that for the future to work it must do so for working people
and their families, what the occupy movement that sprang up across
the world last year called the 99% – the great majority who depend
upon paid labour of some sort. The 1% depend on their wealth and
power working for them – through owning resources or commanding
individuals within organisations, they can take more than the value
they contribute. This is a very simple view, but it is a realistic
one when you think about the abuses of power we've learnt about –
from MPs expenses to bankers' bonuses.

The
working class movement has traditionally organised in response to the
power of the 1% through democratic processes, one person, one vote:
organised in trades unions, friendly societies, co-operatives and
community groups. As a result of this class struggle, the capacity
for greater freedom of expression opened up, rights and liberties
were fought for and enshrined in law. People whose voices had been
ignored came to be heard through self-organisation – women, gay
people, the disabled, ethnic and religious minorities, and so on. We
are a multitude of individuals – our futures are interdependent.

The
struggles for basic democratic rights in the Arab Spring which began
last year in the Middle East and North Africa, were a means to an end
– that of an improved quality of life. It was for the same reason
that trades unions were formed here and elsewhere – collective
action allows individuals to leverage the power of solidarity with
others against the power of established rulers and entrenched elites.

The
positive vision and demand that we can put forward is more
democracy – let's have greater democratic control (one person,
one vote) both in corporate governance and in workplaces. Democratic
control from the shop floor to the boardroom.

We
can prefigure these changes – consider the potential of the trades
union movement making use of “liquid democracy” software like
Adhocracy or LiquidFeedback which allows users to delegate
decision-making or take decisions directly. Political parties in
Germany have started using this software to formulate policy. With
smart-phones, the potential exists for the upcoming generation of
trades union and community activists to be linked together through
applications which would allow transparent yet encrypted
decision-making to take place. It already happening to some degree
through Facebook & Twitter.

George
Osborne might want workers to swap their rights for shares, but this
stupid proposal is one that speaks to a desire for greater autonomy,
for collective ownership and control by workers within enterprises.
It should be natural for the trades union movement to take the
opportunity to put worker control and ownership on the agenda – in
North America, the United Steelworkers' have entered into a
partnership with the Mondragon Co-operatives of Spain to create new
“union co-ops” out of existing capitalist firms in the US and
Canada which the Mondragon Corporation has bought but not converted
to worker co-operatives. The USW will organise the workers and
bargain with management on contracts, and the Mondragon Co-operatives
will provide help and support to allow these new union co-ops to
develop and spread. There's no reason why the support won't be
effective in helping people learn how to work democratically –
Mondragon has its own university, after all.

A
factory in Darlington with a full order book closed last year because
it wasn't sufficiently profitable for its parent company, which took
the decision to liquidate it. Some of the workers bought the
machinery and started up a business of their own. Imagine if, as part
of the insolvency process, workers had been offered the opportunity
to make a go of a failing capitalist enterprise? In Spain and Italy
during the 1980s and early 1990s there were programmes which did just
this – offered financial help and technical support to new worker
co-ops formed out of capitalist enterprises that would otherwise be
broken up. The programmes didn't end because they failed – most of
the businesses succeeded in repaying the soft loans and the failure
rate was very low – but rather because of EU legislation on state
aid.

What
do you think about the future? What are the issues facing people
where you live and work, people in your situation? What can we do to
build a future that works for us?

ANOTHER
ROUND OF ANSWERS

And
the detailed points and discussions on areas of agreement /
disagreement.

COLLECTION
FOR THE COST OF THE ROOM... And any announcements people have.

In which
I confess everything. Well, almost everything. Actually, not
everything. That'd take too long, and I'm not ready to talk about
some stuff.

So I'm
confessing some things which I think it's necessary to say about
myself. It's not really sin, but as Marianne Faithful sang "I
feel guilt, though I know I've done no wrong, I feel guilt". I
am half a person, the other half is guilt. And writing and releasing
this might help to relieve some of that guilt.

The
personal is political to the extent to which cognitive biases are
formed out of experience. What I mean is, our perception of the world
is shaped by events that happen to us. So the following might go some
way to explaining why I feel so strongly about power – the harsh
inequality of political and economic power which diminishes
individuals and which can only be challenged through collective
struggles, through democratic processes.

Here
goes...

I have
suffered from a depressive illness since I was a teenager. This is as
much a matter of physical health as mental. The black dog bites at
your legs, slowing you down, the panic grips you, sealing your lips.
Lethargy descends. A downward spiral. A miasma of misery.

It first
emerged during the stress of making the transition from a primary
school that was in walking distance from home to having to get two
buses to comprehensive school. The separation wasn't only in terms of
space but also people, close friends went to different schools and
that made things much scarier and reduced what little confidence I
had in myself.

As a
result of illness, I missed a lot of secondary education. I have only
three GSCEs - a B in Maths and two As in English Literature and
Language. More shame. That I managed to pass any exams and complete
at least some level of comprehension to a comprehensive education is
thanks to several teachers, including those in the position to
allocate assistance and those who provided it. They did their best,
and I appreciate their efforts to help me.

But what
happened in the years I was actually at school was incredibly
stressful. I was on several occasions physically attacked by other
pupils of my age, and threatened by a small number, including a few
older boys. But the terror of being seen as “a grass”, and
therefore weak, prevented me from telling anyone else. And it was
only after a lot of pressure that I gave up names to my mother, aunt,
and grandmother, which then to went to teachers at the school.

This
didn't really help matters though. And I got into a few losing fights
as a result of peer pressure to demonstrate my lack of weakness. But
worse than physical violence was the verbal abuse which often felt
like it was coming from all directions. I had always been a bit
detached – I was an only child, and was raised by my mother and
grandmother, and outside of school there were one or two kids in the
same street to befriend. I was always more restricted in where I
could go, a protectiveness which remains to this day, to be honest.
My mother and grandmother's fear of my coming to any harm may have
been harmful itself, as it's made it easier for me to retreat into
isolation, to avoid making connections and spending time outside of
their company.

Perhaps
I was just being told the truth: I was soft, weak, a loner. I still
am. But that this marked me out as someone it was acceptable to
blank, to openly deride, to abuse, to harm physically. And so I did
the same things to myself.

What's
weird is that some of the reasons for being singled out related to
coming from a low-income one-parent household: not having trainers or
"fashionable" clothes to wear on dress-down days, not
having a computer games console, and so on.

My
mother worked part time, studied, and saved for my future and she
couldn't really understand the peer pressure to have things which
couldn't reasonably be afforded – trips to fast food restaurants
rather than healthy meals, over-priced brand name trainers over
cheaper logo-less alternatives.

I'm not
saying it was all terrible - there was some sympathy from friends.
But they often had the exact same problem, being marked out for the
same kinds of treatment. And there was the extra guilt: perhaps I was
fucking it up for other people, too? Guilt by association, by
implication...

I could
not see how my life could continue. Becoming a teenager was a
completely unnerving experience. As a child I saw no appeal in
growing up – and as I got older, I lost the imagination which had
allowed me to escape pressures of being different or isolated.

For a
long time I was so ill I could not attend school or often leave the
house. I lost contact with the few close friends I had at various
points in my teenage years. When I was around them, I could not
explain or account for my awkwardness to an extent that relaxed my
anxiety about them knowing.

So, I
feel as if I've lived a double life. I didn't and don't want to have
problems, but I do. Is my failing down to circumstances being against
me, my own physical inability due to illness, or the weakness of my
character? Am I a failure as an individual?

This is
something that people with invisible illnesses have to live with.
When able to perform, to pass as normal, this is of course what we
desire and try to do. But it is also potential proof that we are not
ill, that we are in fact feckless and deceitful. You look okay now,
what's wrong with you? And in any case, am I really performing
correctly – do I appear strange? But then, I am in a strange
situation - the condition that clinicians tell me I have is strange
even to myself.

For
parents and relatives unaccustomed to mental illness in young
children and teenagers, it can seem as if it is typical behaviour but
taken to extremes. The arguments of those years have unfortunately
inculcated doubt and fear – both about talking of the situation I
am in, and of the illnesses I've had diagnosed.

From
about the age of eleven or twelve I was prescribed anti-depressants,
but only after much resistance from my mother. I was put on one or
two before being prescribed one that I took for around four years. It
is now no longer prescribed to children because of high incidences of
serious side effects such as self-harm and suicide.

So was
it the drugs? The legal and medicinal substances I was taking to
combat an illness, were they exacerbating it? Who knows? More
uncertainty. I am still taking an anti-depressant. Is it working or
is it having no effect and any changes that occur in my life are
actually down to me, or to other factors beyond my control? Again,
uncertainty.

Ten
years ago I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital under duress. At
the time, the clinical psychiatrist I was seeing felt it necessary to
switch my medication from that prescribed by the previous
psychiatrist to the one that he preferred – manufactured by a firm
which he was rumoured by other patients to have a significant
shareholding in. Going cold turkey on the old pills made me
physically sick, which in turn made me very depressed and emotional.
The shrink offered me a false choice: either be admitted voluntarily
or be sectioned. I chose the “voluntary” option.

In
hospital I spent several days in complete despair. Thankfully,
because I was seventeen, they had to give me a room of my own. I
didn't eat anything for a few days because I was so distressed at
being hospitalised. I feel my admission at the time had more to do
with the power-trip of the psychiatrist in question (remarked upon by
other members of staff, for example, in meetings in which he reduced
me to tears by attempting to restrict my contacts with my family and
prevent me from leaving). There's more I could say about him, such as
his apparent prejudices, but that's something which involves further
confession, and what I'm writing about here is hard enough.

A few
years ago, I was given a diagnosis of having an autistic spectrum
disorder, despite having been told as a teenager that this was
definitely not the case by a child psychologist with experience in
treating children with Aspergers' Syndrome and other conditions “on
the spectrum”. Was he mistaken? Or was he right, but I have changed
in the intervening years? Who knows?

I
managed to get a referral to have some tests done. But the unit
carrying these out was apparently over-subscribed, insufficiently
funded, and not within the local Trust. And then it closed. So, I
didn't get an authoritative answer. I did receive some very important
help from an occupational therapist – including group activities
and education about illness which helped make a breakthrough.

Three
years ago I started some abortive attempts at voluntary work and then
a more successful Open University course. I also got involved in
voluntary work with local campaigning organisations like Friends of
the Earth and, yes, the Labour Party.

In all
these activities, there has been the problem of accounting for what
might appear to be odd behaviour or unaccounted absences. I can't say
I've been as upfront as I'd like, and an inability to speak aloud and
as coherently as I am able if I've written notes makes it that much
harder.

The
divided nature of political activities has provided me with much to
think about as I study the social sciences and ponder levels and
modes of participation in collective forms of lobbying and
decision-making. Why was it that my involvement in the one activity
has occasionally seemed odd, or at least unusual, to those primarily
involved in another form of activity?

What
worries me about making this confession public (or at least, known to
people I know and trust sufficiently to let them know) is that it
might then lead to a reappraisal of past or subsequent activities or
expressions of thought in light of this. I will then become genuinely
mad, a clearly mad individual, as opposed to someone who is a bit
odd. Who will listen to a madman?

I
sometimes don't even trust myself – or at least, I question if I
can go on sustaining a level of selfness (that isn't even a word, but
I can't think of any other description for it).

I
struggle to communicate in person, or at least, I usually feel
incredibly anxious whilst doing it. And I often find myself tormented
with thoughts of what I did badly, where I didn't perform in a way
which allowed people to understand me – perhaps I have hurt someone
with what I have said, haven't said, or may have been understood to
have said.

Social
life is performative, productive: we do stuff to stuff, yes.
Our labour transforms the natural world and other individuals, yet we
may only be remunerated for certain of these activities – for
others we expect no reward, rightly or wrongly, but nonetheless
produce effects upon the material and social world we live in.

We
attach a great deal of significance to those activities we perform,
the ideas which give us guidance about reality and what's right –
the descriptive and normative ideas which derive from material
conditions, but also from the ideas which are, when you think about
it, ultimately materially transmitted through the speech and physical
activity of other individuals.

But it
must be remembered that we also perform social life in a way that is
about more than usefulness. You might wear sunglasses to shade your
eyes, but also to signify style. A phrase or gesture might convey a
practical message, but also one about status or desire.

The
symbolic order works like this: a sign is comprised of the signifier
(the word "hat") with the signified (the idea of what a hat
is, the function it performs); a symbol is comprised of a sign (say,
a top hat) which acts as a signifier for another signified concept
(the cultural associations of what a top hat tells us about the
wearer, the situation, the behaviour expected or likely to occur, and
so on).

We are,
to quote the title of a Fall album “Perverted by Language”. The
curse and blessing of the species is the ability to develop signs
into symbols. The curse and blessing I have is that these things are
a challenge to my everyday life.

Perhaps things like endogenous
depression and Asperger's Syndrome are actually about the symbolic
order rather than anything innate – what I mean is, there's grounds
for thinking that a social model of disability is an appropriate way
of understanding these impairments. And if this model is of more
validity than a medical one, then pharmaceuticals are of less or no
relevance to treatment of the condition.

So it's
hardly surprising if I've followed my teenage years, writing letters
to pen friends who I never met, with writing emails, texts, blog
posts, and communicating with people more in this way as a means to
meeting people outside of the home. I face a struggle to go on, to build confidence,
to maintain composure and to have the will to go on doing these
things, to go on living.